Koudelka Shooting Holy Land

Czech photographer Josef Koudelka grew up behind the Iron Curtain, and always wanted to know what was “on the other side”. Forty years after shooting his iconic images of the Soviet invasion of Prague in 1968, the famous Magnum photographer arrived in Israel and Palestine. He was deeply shaken by the nine-meter-high wall Israel built on the West Bank, and decided to start a photographic project to force this region to confront the crude reality of violence and conflict. Director Gilad Baram, his assistant at that time, followed him around the Holy Land. In this film, he introduces the spectator to Koudelka’s work method, his perception of the world as he documented it, and also to the people he met during his journey. Koudelka chose not to show explicit violence, but to immortalize the breathtaking views of the region and its inhabitants’ everyday life. The film also expresses the dialogue that emerges from Baram’s cinematic approach to Koudelka’s photographs when the director includes the photographer in his own compositions.